Recently discovered rock collection belonged to Ohio State's first president

Sunday

Aug 3, 2014 at 12:01 AMAug 3, 2014 at 1:13 PM

Dale Gnidovec flipped through a set of keys until he found the one to a cluttered room in the basement of Ohio State University's Mendenhall Laboratory. Inside, Gnidovec began to go through dusty file cabinets and lockers and discovered something akin to a gold mine. Room 72 has been used for storage by Gnidovec, collections manager and curator of the Orton Geological Museum, and others for decades.

Dale Gnidovec flipped through a set of keys until he found the one to a cluttered room in the basement of Ohio State University’s Mendenhall Laboratory.

Inside, Gnidovec began to go through dusty file cabinets and lockers and discovered something akin to a gold mine.

Room 72 has been used for storage by Gnidovec, collections manager and curator of the Orton Geological Museum, and others for decades. Mendenhall, home to the OSU School of Earth Sciences, is next door to Orton Hall.

But this summer he was told that some of the space the museum uses in Mendenhall needed to be cleared out by fall to make room for two new faculty members and 14 graduate students.

After removing mastodon bones from one room in the basement, Gnidovec entered room 72 and opened the first of 20 cabinets.

That’s where he found shelves lined with rocks inscribed with red numbers. Edward Orton, a geology professor and Ohio State’s first president, marked his own teaching collection in red.

“I was pleasantly surprised, but a little sad that those things have been gone for so long,” Gnidovec said. “But they’ve been recovered so now we can use them again.”

Some specimens date back to 1874, including gold ore from the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nev., the site of the country’s first major silver discovery.

Gnidovec also relocated a fist-size specimen of native copper collected in 8 feet of glacial drift on the grounds of the former Lunatic Asylum of Ohio around 1875. The hospital was located on Columbus’ West Side.

Drift copper is almost unknown in Ohio and some have questioned whether the copper was deposited by glaciers or carried by ancient cultures.

Among other specimens are iron ores from Ohio, one of the nation’s leading iron producers during the Civil War, and copper ores from Butte, Mont., known as the “richest hill on Earth.”

Most specimens were collected in the United States by OSU geologists. Some were found in Europe.

“There are specimens here that are from quarries and mines that no longer exist,” said William Ausich, director of the Orton Geological Museum.

“It’s like Christmas when you get all this material that has been thought to be unavailable."

Realizing what he had, Gnidovec grabbed a cart and began wheeling specimens back to the museum next door in Orton Hall, where he continues to sort them. He still has several more cabinets to explore.

Many of the specimens were borrowed from the museum decades ago to teach ore mineralogy classes, Gnidovec said. As years passed and professors who used them retired, the specimens found their way into the storage lockers.

“We thought they were lost, stolen or gone,” Gnidovec said. “I’m not sure where I’m going to put them, but it’s nice to get them back.”

It’s difficult for museums with large collections to keep track of everything, said Kevin Czaja, assistant curator at Harvard University’s Mineralogical and Geological Museum, which has more than 300,000 specimens stored in four locations.

“We stumble upon things all the time,” Czaja said. “We’re trying to change that in the sense that we’re trying to get everything into an updated database.”

The Orton museum has more than 54,000 numbered specimens stored in three buildings. Orton’s teaching collection made up the museum’s first 10,000 specimens.

Some of the relocated ores once again will be used for teaching, Ausich said. Others will go on display or become resources for scientists who might not find similar specimens elsewhere.

“Each of these things actually represents a tremendous amount of time and effort ... (that) could still never be duplicated,” Ausich said.